How to get ChatGPT to recommend your business
ChatGPT names the businesses it can find, read and corroborate. When someone asks it who to use, it searches the web, reads what comes back and repeats what several sources agree on. Being recommended comes down to three things: its crawler can reach you, your pages say plainly what you do, and the places it reads mention you.
Each sounding opens its section
- 01 How ChatGPT chooses who to name 73 words
- 02 1. Let its crawler in 73 words
- 03 2. Be found in ordinary search first 57 words
- 04 3. State the facts plainly 52 words
- 05 4. Mark up the business 42 words
- 06 5. Keep your details identical everywhere 46 words
- 07 6. Earn mentions where it reads 48 words
- 08 7. Answer the questions customers ask 43 words
- 09 Check, then repeat 52 words
- 10 Questions people ask 132 words
- 11 Free competitor gap report 106 words
- 12 More in this series 77 words
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- File
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How ChatGPT chooses who to name
When a question needs current information, ChatGPT searches the web. OpenAI says it rewrites the question into one or more targeted searches, sends them to search providers, reads the results and writes an answer with its sources linked. A business appears in that answer when the pages it read mention the business in a way that fits the question.
Seven things decide whether yours is among them.
1. Let its crawler in
OpenAI’s search crawler is called OAI-SearchBot, and OpenAI states that sites which opt out of it are not shown in ChatGPT search answers. Open your robots.txt file and check that nothing disallows it. Some hosting and security services also block AI crawlers before robots.txt is read, so check those settings too. Our guide to whether to block AI crawlers lists each crawler and what it does.
2. Be found in ordinary search first
ChatGPT search draws on search providers, and OpenAI names Microsoft’s Bing among them. A page that is missing from ordinary search engines is unlikely to be read by an assistant either. Verify the site in Bing Webmaster Tools as well as Google Search Console, and submit the sitemap to both.
3. State the facts plainly
An assistant quotes what it can read as text. Say what the business does, where, and for whom, in the first lines of the home page and of each service page. Facts that live only inside an image, a video or a downloadable brochure are not read.
4. Mark up the business
Structured data states the same facts in a form a machine does not have to interpret: the name, the address, the services and the contact details. Our guide to schema markup covers the types a business needs.
5. Keep your details identical everywhere
An assistant gains confidence when sources agree. The business name, address and phone number should match on the website, the Google Business Profile and every directory. One listing with an old address is a reason to doubt all of them.
6. Earn mentions where it reads
Answers about who to use lean on pages that are not yours: directories, review sites, trade bodies, local news and comparison articles. Ask the questions your customers ask, open the sources the answer cites, and work on being listed in those places.
7. Answer the questions customers ask
Assistants search for specific questions, and they cite the page that answers one directly. A page for each question a customer asks before buying, with the answer in its first paragraph, gives an assistant something to quote.
Check, then repeat
Answers vary from one run to the next and change as the web does, so one check proves little. Our guide to checking whether ChatGPT recommends your business sets out a routine to repeat each month, and seeing ChatGPT traffic in Google Analytics shows what those answers send you.
Questions people ask
Do I need a special file or code for ChatGPT?
No special file is required. Google states that its AI features need no extra files or markup, and OpenAI asks only that its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, is allowed to read the site.
Can I pay ChatGPT to recommend my business?
Not within an answer. The businesses ChatGPT names in an answer are drawn from what it finds on the web. Advertising in ChatGPT is a separate system from the answers.
How soon does ChatGPT notice changes to my website?
ChatGPT search reads the live web, so a change can be picked up as soon as its crawler or its search providers revisit the page. What the underlying model learned in training changes only when a new model is trained.
Free competitor gap report
Answer engines repeat what the web already says about a market. Name up to three competitors and we measure your site against theirs, including how each one reads to an answer engine, then send you where they are easier to find and cite.
- Speed and technical health, side by side
- On-page SEO and site structure
- The content they are found for and you are not
- Who holds the searches that matter in your market
- A prioritised list of what to fix first
Request your free report by email
- Address
- contact@hadalmedusa.com
- Include
- your site; up to three competitors; where you compete
More in this series
- How to check if ChatGPT recommends your business
- How ChatGPT search chooses the websites it cites
- What llms.txt is, with an example
- Should you block AI crawlers?
- How to see ChatGPT traffic in Google Analytics
- AI Overviews and falling clicks: how to check, and what to do
- Generative engine optimisation: what it means and what works
- AI search and answer engines: the whole topic
- All guides
- On-site SEO: what the service includes